Such things do not happen in the New York Exchange, for when there is a slump in any group of shares, instantly there gathers a number of individuals who are there for the very purpose of making a market. It may be a “soft” market, with wide fluctuations, but it is a market for all that, and the timely absence at an all-day luncheon of any one man or any group of men cannot possibly affect it. There have been occasions on the New York Stock Exchange, no doubt, where a broker with a “hurry” order in a very inactive security has not found a market awaiting him, but there are various ways by which he may seek the desired market and ultimately he is sure to find it. In any case such an incident is the exception that proves the rule that a free market, affording all the advantages which excellent markets possess, is nowhere to be found more easily and more quickly than on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. “American securities,” says the Paris correspondent of the _Journal of Commerce_ in his cabled despatches of October 23, 1912--referring to the Balkan crisis in that city--“may with complete conservatism be regarded as having received a splendid advertisement in the French market by reason of their recent remarkable instantaneous conversion into cash.” In the course of many years of active experience as broker, trader, and speculator, I do not now recall an instance in which I was unable to find a market on the New York Exchange for any security, however inactive, which I wished to buy or sell. If the specialist in this particular stock cannot satisfy me with his quotation, there are always room traders to whom I may submit my offer; there are also arbitrageurs, wire houses, and banking houses interested in this particular security. Somewhere among all these agencies the New York broker must inevitably find or create a market. But I fancy he would have a sorry time of it were he restricted, under the rules, to dealing with a jobber who “is apt to be away at lunch all day,” when trouble comes and risks are involved.